Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone! I hope you all are staying safe and healthy during this awful year.
Thank you for following my work!
Happy Holidays!
Abandoned Theater
Artists Sunday – November 29, 2020
Colonial Theatre – Laconia, NH.
I’ll be taking part in the first-ever Artists Sunday on November 29, 2020. It’s similar to Black Friday or Small Business Saturday but encourages people to buy art!
Between now and November 29 I’ll be uploading a lot of new and never before seen work to my print store at http://www.mlambrosphotography.com/store. If you want a sneak peek of the new work be sure to follow my Instagram and Twitter pages.
The sale will go live at 12:01 AM on November 29, 2020, and end at 11:59 PM.
Visit http://www.mlambrosphotography.com/store and use the coupon code “Artistssunday” at checkout to get 20% off your order. The first 13 people to spend over $100 will get a free matted 8×12 print.
Lobby, Adams Theatre – Newark, NJ
Here’s a short interview I did with the Boston Globe about the event:
Here’s a bit about Artists Sunday from their website:
“Artists Sunday is the nationwide movement dedicated to supporting artists and recognizing the impact they have in enriching our lives, communities, and the economy. The powerful new effort is designed to make the Sunday after Thanksgiving the most profitable day of the year for artists. Consumers are encouraged to shop with artists and purchase creative, handcrafted gifts for the holidays. Artists Sunday follows Black Friday and Small Business Saturday, prior to Cyber Monday. Supporters include individual artists, economic development agencies, and non-profit organizations across the country. To learn more about Artists Sunday artists, partners, sponsors, or involvement in promoting commerce with artists, please visit http://ArtistsSunday.com/“
Artist Sunday Flyer
Uptown Theatre – Philadelphia, PA
The Uptown is one of the theaters that was exclusive to my first book, After the Final Curtain: The Fall of the American Movie Theater. However, due to the events of today (11.6.20) I think it’s fitting I post a theater from the city of Brotherly Love.
Stevie Wonder, The Jackson 5, The Temptations, Ray Charles, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, and the Supremes all have one thing in common, besides being renowned musical artists; they all performed at the Uptown Theatre in Philadelphia, PA. The Uptown originally opened on February 16, 1929 in the North Central neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The 2,040-seat theater was designed by the architectural firm of Magaziner, Eberhard and Harris. It was built by Samuel Shapiro (who owned several theaters in the Philadelphia area) and operated by the Warner-Stanley (Warner Bros) Theatre Circuit.
Opening day at the Uptown consisted of a showing of “On Trial” starring Pauline Frederick and Bert Lytell and a Movietone address by Dr. Charles Beury, the president of nearby Temple University. The Movietone sound system allowed the Uptown to show talking motion pictures as soon as it opened. Vaudeville acts were also part of the regular bill and unlike many of its contemporaries the Uptown held vaudeville performances until 1950.
In 1957 Philadelphia radio personality Georgie Woods began producing shows at the theater. Woods was responsible for turning the Uptown into Philadelphia’s answer to Harlem’s Apollo Theatre by booking many famous African American acts. He referred to the Uptown as “the grand jewel of entertainment for Black America.” The theater became part of the “Chitlin’ Circuit”, which was the informal name given to performance venues across the United States that were safe for African- American entertainers to perform in during the period of segregation. According to R&B singer Ruth Brown, the Uptown was one of the four major theaters on the circuit that you had to play to prove that you had made it as an entertainer. The others were: the Howard in Washington DC, the Regal in Chicago, IL and the Apollo in New York City.
Like the Apollo, the Uptown became known for amateur nights where local artists could compete for prizes. Daryl Hall of Hall & Oates got his start at one of the Uptown amateur nights. Hall attended Temple University and won a record deal at an amateur talent show at the theater. The Uptown was also famous for booking acts at a very low price. Allegedly, Woods was able to get the Supremes for a 10-day engagement for just $400. Woods was also very active in the American civil rights movement and often used the theater to promote it. He would hold “freedom shows” to promote civil rights at the Uptown, giving the profits to charities of his choice, regardless of race or creed. Woods was honored for his involvement in the civil rights movement by the Philadelphia branch of the NAACP in a ceremony held at the Uptown. By 1971 the shows were grossing $250,000 a year and films were only shown during the times when no live performances were booked. However, in 1972 Woods stopped producing shows at the Uptown. By 1978 the theater’s audience grew too small for even the minor acts and it was forced to close.
The Uptown reopened as a church in the 1980s. Services were held at the theater until the roof was damaged by a storm in 1991 and the church was forced to vacate the property. The Uptown Entertainment and Development Corporation (UEDC), a nonprofit whose mission is to develop revitalization projects in downtrodden neighborhoods, bought the theater in 2002. UEDC raised enough money to stabilize the roof, restore the building’s exterior and renovate the attached office space. They plan to use the funds raised from renting out the office building to fully repair the roof and restore the auditorium so that the Uptown can be reopened as a performing arts center. UEDC estimates it will cost $8 million dollars to fully restore the building.
“Haunted” Theatres
One superstition in the theatrical world is that every theater has a ghost because of this many of these buildings have traditions to appease the restless spirits. One common one is the use of a ghost light, which is a single light that is always on in the center of the stage. It’s said that this provides the spirits with the opportunity to perform on stage and keeps them from cursing the theater. In reality, the ghost light is there so that people will not trip and fall into the orchestra pit while walking across the darkened stage.
Full disclosure – I’m a complete skeptic when it comes to the paranormal. I’ve been visiting places that you’d assume would be full of ghosts: abandoned asylums, prisons, houses, and theaters. However, I have never come across anything that didn’t have a rational explanation.
Halloween is one of my favorite holidays so I’ve put together a list of some of the theaters I’ve visited that have ghost stories attached to them.
The first theater is the Warner (Pacific) Theatre in Los Angeles, CA. It is allegedly haunted by the ghost of Sam Warner, of Warner Bros Pictures. Warner died of pneumonia a day before the film he had been working on – the “Jazz Singer” premiered. His ghost was said to use the elevator in the theater until it stopped working after an earthquake in 1994. Warner’s ghost has also been blamed for many items going missing only to turn up in different locations hours or days later.
Next is the Variety Theatre in Cleveland, Ohio. Patrick Colvin, the building’s caretaker, has witnessed lights turning on and off, doors closing and opening, and has heard voices throughout the building when there is no one there. He has named many of the ghosts and greets them every time he enters the building.
The third is the Lincoln Square Theatre in Decatur, IL. The Lincoln Square is said to be haunted by a former theater worker named “Red”. People claim to have heard him whisper, and seen him walking around the stage area. According to one website, there was a stagehand nicknamed “Red” who worked at the theater during the vaudeville era. He took a nap in the theater after eating his lunch one day in 1927 and never woke up.
Fourth on the list is the Loew’s Poli (Palace) and Majestic Theatres in Bridgeport, CT. According to one site, the complex may have been built on a Native American burial ground due to artifacts found during the construction of the building. People have claimed to hear the muffled sounds of a crowd and see shadowy figures move through the auditorium.
Last is the Rialto Theatre in South Pasadena, CA. Rumors that the Rialto is haunted have been around for years. One story says that it’s haunted by a woman who committed suicide on the balcony. Another story says that a man went insane in the projector room. It’s alleged that the ghost of an older man has been seen on the balcony and that the stalls in the girl’s bathroom shake when there is no one around.
I’ll be back in a few days with an update post on what I’ve been doing these past few months. Happy Halloween!
Capitol Theatre – New London, CT
View of the auditorium from the balcony.
George Burns and Gracie Allen are one of the most well-known comedy duos of the 20th century, and legend has it that they met at the Capitol Theatre in New London, CT. This isn’t true, but they were introduced by Allen’s roommate at the time, Rena Arnold, who went on to marry Walter T. Murphy, the owner of the Capitol Theatre.
View of the auditorium from the stage.
The Capitol Theatre opened on November 21, 1921. Tickets for the opening day celebration went on sale three days earlier, and sold out in just a few hours. According to an article in The New London Day, “In beauty, comfort, equipment, construction, and other ways, it equals, if it does not surpass any theater of its size in the country.” Architect W. H. Lowe designed the interior, which featured a mural of cherubs above the proscenium arch. Like many other theaters of the time, the Capitol had an orchestra pit, and an organ.
The opening act was Billy Sharpe and the 20th Century Revue.
Murphy sold the theater to the Connecticut Theatres Operating Company in 1942. Ownership and management of the Capitol between the mid-1940s and early-1970s is unclear, but we do know that the Capitol was closed on April 22, 1974 after a visit by the New London building inspector found multiple violations, including an unsafe marquee, eight feet of water in the basement, and a broken toilet in the projection booth. Its closing was made permanent after the projectionists union complained of unsafe working conditions. It was purchased by the City of New London for $55,000 in 1978 so that they could provide fire exits on the adjoining buildings — a tunnel was built under the theater’s stage that connected the buildings on either side of the theater to serve as their fire exit.
The ticket booth pictured here was not original to the theater.
Beyond housing this fire exit, the theater has been unused since 1978. Proposals for revitalizing the building have included a performing arts center, a disco, a mini-mall, a twin-screen theater, a flea market, a visitors center for a maritime heritage park, and a Jehovah’s Witnesses meeting hall. Every plan has fallen through — one developer said “Physically, it’s just too big. There just isn’t the population in the area to fill that theater every night.” The City executed some general maintenance on the theater in 1995, including replacing the roof, removing the seats, and cleaning up the interior of the building, but no additional work has been done on the theater space since then.
The South Eastern New England Theatre Organ Society (SENTOS) purchased the Marr & Colton Organ in 1977 and placed it in storage. The last time it had been played was in 1936.
Maxim Development Group (MDG) purchased the theater in 2006 for $1 in exchange for modest tax breaks, provided that MDG renovate and develop the theater into a live music venue within an agreed upon time frame. Before the deal was executed, local newspaper The Day revealed that the head of the company had defrauded investors of millions, and had been convicted of attempted armed robbery. The City of New London went through with the deal regardless, and within the year the company had broken its agreement with the City. It was seized by the City for non-payment of taxes, and auctioned to two contractors from New York for $20,000, who later sold the property for $68,000 to a local developer. The theater is currently for sale.
In my opinion the Capitol is worth reusing, but it should become something other than a performing arts center. New London has a movie palace-turned-performing arts center, the Garde Arts Center, located less than a mile from the Capitol. A return to movies in the style of a place like the Nitehawk Cinemas, a New York City movie theater chain that offers food and drinks that can be ordered and consumed while watching a film, might be something that would work.
Digital Theater Reconstructions
Mark Jabara, an artist from Australia, has been taking some of my theater images and restoring them in Photoshop. The Boyd Theatre, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania’s only art deco movie palace, opened on Christmas day in 1928. It closed in 2002, and the auditorium was demolished in the spring of 2015.
Auditorium of the Boyd Theatre in Philadelphia, PA
Digital Restoration of the Boyd with original colors.
The Madison in Peoria, IL was originally designed in the Adamesque style and was remodeled in 1936 in the simpler art deco style to ease the maintenance of the building. Mark restored some of the lost adamesque details near the stage.
Auditorium, Madison Theatre – Peoria, IL
Digital Restoration of the Madison Theatre with some original details restored.
The United Artists Theatre in Detroit, Michigan opened on February 3, 1928 and closed in August 1972. It’s one of the most dangerous and deteriorated theaters I’ve ever photographed.
Auditorium, United Artists Theatre – Detroit, MI
Digital Restoration of the United Artists Theatre with original colors.
The Boyd Theatre is featured in my first book, After the Final Curtain: The Fall of the American Movie Theater. The Madison and United Artists are featured in my latest book, After the Final Curtain: America’s Abandoned Theaters. Both are available on my site, Bookshop.org, and bookstores everywhere.
United Artists Theatre – Detroit, MI
An expanded version of this post on the United Artists Theatre in Detroit, MI is in my new book “After the Final Curtain: America’s Abandoned Theaters.” For more information visit: http://www.afterthefinalcurtainbook.com
View of the auditorium from the balcony.
Designed by famed theater architect C. Howard Crane, the United Artists Theatre in Detroit, Michigan opened on February 3, 1928. It cost $5 million ($77.8 million when adjusted for inflation) to build the 2,070-seat theater and 18-story office building. Crane was hired by the founders of United Artist Pictures — D.W. Griffith, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin — to design the theater based on castles that Pickford and Fairbanks saw while on honeymoon in Spain. The theater’s Spanish Gothic interior was very similar in design to the United Artists Theatre in Los Angeles, California, which was also designed by Crane and had opened a little over a month earlier. An opening day advertisement in the Detroit Free Press called the theater “Old World Luxury combined with New World Comfort.” The feature presentation on opening day was “Sadie Thompson” a silent film starring Gloria Swanson and Lionel Barrymore. Swanson made an “appearance” via phone and spoke to the audience about the film. The United Artists was designed for feature films, though it did feature the occasional live show, and had a house orchestra as well as a Wurlitzer Opus 1824 theater organ.
The fire curtain can be seen in this close up of the proscenium arch.
The theater was closed for modernization in 1950; new projectors, a new screen and a sound system were installed in the auditorium, and a snack bar was installed in the lobby. In January 1970, the United Artists switched to showing X-rated films. The first X-rated film shown was “Camille 2000”, an Italian movie starring Danièle Gaubert. The format change only lasted around three months and the theater returned to showing regular films on March 25, 1970. The United Artists changed formats a few times before closing on September 14, 1971 after a showing of “Sweet Sweetback’s Badass Song” starring Melvin Van Peebles. It reopened a few times over the next year — once as the Downtown Theatre —but closed for good in August 1972.
Decorative plasterwork covering one of the organ chambers.
Artifacts from the theater were auctioned off through DuMochelle Galleries on February 15, 1975; auctioned items included the lobby furniture, chandeliers, fountains, seats, and marble statues. The Detroit Symphony Orchestra began to use the theater as a recording studio in April 1978, but was forced to stop in 1983 due to the deterioration of the building. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places that same year. A number of plans, including demolishing the building to build a baseball stadium, were proposed over the years, but none came to fruition.
View of the auditorium from the stage area.
In May 2017, it was announced that the office portion of the building would be turned into 148 residential units with retail on the first floor. The developer intends to demolish the theater because according to Gershman Mortgage, who is providing $34.5 million for the project, a dilapidated theater or a restored one put the financing in jeopardy. Adam Hendin, a vice president at Gershman is quoted as saying “the theater building is dilapidated and not an attractive building to live next to” and “If the theater building gets renovated and becomes operational again, Gershman has concerns that this adjoining commercial, public use would disrupt the residential tenants and therefore make the project less attractive and less marketable as a going concern.”
Much of the first floor, as well as the stairs were covered in a thick layer of ice.
View of the auditorium from the side of the balcony.
A close up of some of the decorative plasterwork in the auditorium dome.
If you enjoy After the Final Curtain consider supporting me on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/afterthefinalcurtain?fan_landing=true There are some exclusive benefits, and you’ll be among the first to listen to my podcast when it launches very soon.
Norwich State Hospital Theater
I don’t talk about this very often, but for a long time I wanted to be a Director, and make movies. When I first started exploring abandoned buildings I had a video camera in hand the whole time. Those tapes have been packed away in a box for years, but I recently transferred the footage to my computer. This is a short walkthrough of the Norwich State Hospital Theater from 2004. The building (along with many others on the campus) has since been demolished.
I’ll be posting some more videos from back then on the After the Final Curtain Youtube page in the coming months.
An Acre of Seats in a Palace of Decay
Auditorium, California Theatre – San Diego, CA.
Hi Everyone!
I’ll be exhibiting some of my work at the Wall Gallery at Percival Brewing Company. It’s located at 83 Morse Street, Norwood, MA starting on December 14 and running to January 24, 2020. There’s going to be an opening reception on Dec 14 from 2-4 PM. Hope to see some of you there!
Almost all of the work I’m exhibiting will be on metal. Metal Prints are created by infusing a digital photograph onto raw aluminum, and the result is an image that almost jumps out at you. I’m not going to share them here because the screen and my iPhone shot doesn’t do them justice.
Ok, maybe just one.
Also, if you’re looking to order a copy of my new book, After the Final Curtain: America’s Abandoned Theatres, from me directly in time for Christmas please place your order by December 15th.
Happy Holidays! – Matt
After the Final Curtain: America’s Abandoned Theatres is here!
After the Final Curtain: America’s Abandoned Theatres
I received my copies of my new book After the Final Curtain: America’s Abandoned Theaters, yesterday and it looks amazing! I’ll be shipping out the pre-orders starting today. Each pre-ordered copy comes with a 5×7 print, ticket from Proctor’s Palace Theatre, and a USB drive with the After the Final Curtain logo courtesy of USB Memory Direct. Here’s some more information from their website:
“USB Memory Direct specializes in custom-printed and custom shape USB flash drives. Being in business for over 15 years, UMD has gained a reputation for being one of the premiere providers of wholesale USB flash drives across the country. With a wide variety of drive styles to choose from, you’ll be sure to find a drive that you can customize to perfectly represent you and your brand. You can also rest assured knowing that they offer a lifetime guarantee on any and all drives you purchase from them. Check them out today and request a quote from one of their friendly and knowledgeable account executives.”
The pre-order package will be available until I run out of tickets, prints and USB drives. You can order a signed copy at my site: http://www.mlambrosphotography.com/store/after-the-final-curtain-americas-abandoned-theaters
Or a non-signed copy at:
Amazon: https://amzn.to/33bjLKl
Barnes and Noble: https://tinyurl.com/y3cxxb8j
Indiebound: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9782361953485
Waterstones: https://tinyurl.com/yym686rf
